§ Mr. MartlewTo ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the reasons for refusing the Cumbria county council trading standards department details of the movements in Cumbria of cows found to be suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
§ Mr. MacleanThe handling and, if necessary, the investigation of cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy is the responsibility of the Ministry. Details of individual cases are held in confidence.
§ Mr. Ron DaviesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what information he has about the extent of the use of bovine products in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries; whether such use includes the use of offals banned from human consumption; whether he has any estimate of the amount of such products; and whether there are any controls, either current or proposed, to regulate such use.
§ Mr. MacleanReturns from the pharmaceutical industry confirm that only a small percentage of their products include materials of bovine and other animal origin. I have no comparable information about the cosmetic industry. Bovine offals account for only a small proportion of the animal material and they are mainly imported from countries where bovine spongiform encephalopathy has not been detected. The Southwood committee concluded that the risk of transmitting bovine spongiform encephalopathy via medicines appears remote and theoretical, but as a precautionary measure, special 569W guidelines from the Committee on Safety of Medicines and the Veterinary Products Committee on the use of bovine materials in the production of medicines were circulated to pharmaceutical companies last March. If any evidence were to be found that a medicinal product might be unsafe, Ministers have powers under the Medicines Act to revoke or suspend the licence.
§ Mr. Ron DaviesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list all those animal species which are currently or proposed to be researched with a view to determining susceptibility to spongiform encephalopathy from scrapie of bovine spongiform encephalopathy sources.
§ Mr. MacleanThe following animal species are currently or proposed to be the subject of transmission experiments to determine their susceptibility to bovine spongiform encephalopathy:
Research on species' susceptibility to scrapie is being funded at the AFRC/MRC neuropathogenesis unit through the science budget.
- Cattle
- Sheep
- Goats
- Pigs
- Chickens
- Marmosets
- Mink
- Hamsters
- Mice
§ Mr. Ron DaviesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will detail work being undertaken to develop a diagnostic test for bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the live and clinically affected animal.
§ Mr. MacleanBovine spongiform encephalopathy is currently diagnosed on the basis of histopathology in the brain of clinically infected animals. MAFF is funding research to develop diagnostic tests in the live, pre-clinical affected animal using molecular biological techniques. This research is being carried out at MAFF's central veterinary laboratory, Weybridge and the AFRC-MRC neuropathogenesis unit in Edinburgh. Relevant slow virus research is being funded at the neuropathogenesis unit through the science budget.
§ Mr. Ron DaviesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he is currently researching into the effects of scrapie-infected material being incorporated into feeding compounds for pigs and chickens; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. MacleanThe Southwood working party pointed out that no naturally occurring spongiform ence-phalopathies had been recorded in pigs and poultry and did not suggest that action was necessary to stop the use of ruminant protein in their feed. However, it was suggested that further research should be carried out and MAFF is conducting transmission experiments to investigate the susceptibility of pigs and poultry to bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
§ Mr. Ron DaviesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he intends researching into the infectivity of organs and tissues from bovine spongiform encephalopathy-infected cattle other than those currently banned from human consumption; and which such organs he regards as his research priority.
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§ Mr. MacleanMAFF will he funding research into the infectivity of the full range of organs and tissues from bovine spongiform encephalopathy-infected cattle not currently banned from human consumption.
Priority will be given to those organs and tissues consumed by humans in significant quantities, to confirm their safety as currently assessed from research on scrapie. Tissues of possible relevance in the transmission of the disease in cattle will also be tested.
§ Mr. Ron DaviesTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he received the interim report of the Tyrell committee on research into bovine spongiform encephalopathy; and why he decided not to make the report immediately available to the public.
§ Mr. MacleanThe report was received on 16 June 1989. It makes many recommendations on a wide range of research topics which necessitated detailed, and inevitably time-consuming, study to enable a properly considered response in respect of the work to be done and its funding. There have, however, been no delays and a good deal of the most important research is already under way.